One of the concepts that has really influenced fitness programming is the Joint-By-Joint approach to training made popular by world renowned Physical Therapist Gray Cook and Strength & Conditioning Coach Mike Boyle.
The Joint-By-Joint concept attempts to explain the body as a stack of joints, some of which tend to need more stability and others which usually would benefit from increased mobility.
Using this approach you will see that the joints actually alternate between mobility and stability as you move from the ground up.
- Ankle - Mobility
- Knee - Stability
- Hip - Mobility
- Lumbar Spine (lower back) - Stability
- Thoracic Spine (upper back) - Mobility
- Scapula (shoulder blades) - Stability
- Gleno-humeral (shoulders) - Mobility
This has many implications for both injury prevention and performance. For example, many lower back issues can occur because of a lack hip mobility. If your hips are stiff, then you won't be able to move efficiently and so your body will compensate by moving more from your lower back, which in turn puts more pressure on the area and can cause an injury.
By focusing on improving hip mobility and increasing core stability you can potentially overcome this problem.
The same principle applies further up the body with a lack of mobility in your thoracic spine contributing to either lower back issues below or even shoulder problems above.
As you begin to understand this approach to training, you can see how it affects exercise selection and why it is important to include mobility and stability exercises in the workouts.
Here are some exercises which are beneficial because of the Joint-By-Joint concept...
- Single leg exercises to promote knee and core stability
- Split squat and lunge variations to promote hip mobility
- Anti-rotation core exercises for core stability
- Thoracic spine mobility exercises like the Quadruped Rotation
- Scapula stability exercises like YTWs
Hopefully from the information above you can see that there is method to the madness of my training programs :)
I love creating workouts that are fun to do, but even more important is that I want to give you workouts that get results! (Hopefully you have experienced some of this already)
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